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Raising the roof on crude oil storage tank safety

Published: May 10, 2018

Victoria-based Syscor’s FR-Tracker system acts as a wireless watchdog for floating tank roofs

For nearly a full century, the floating roof has been the lynchpin of crude oil storage.

The concept hasn’t changed much. But now, a British Columbia-based company is now putting a technological tiger in the industry’s tank, so to speak.

“The first floating roof was built in 1919, and it’s actually evolved very little since then,” says Nick Tzonev, chief executive officer of Victoria’s Syscor Controls & Automation Inc. “Much of the industry’s infrastructure is getting old; a lot of tanks were built in the 1950s and 1960s, during the big terminal industry boom.

“And we’re also seeing an exodus of knowledge from the field, either through retirement or today’s higher rate of job turnover.”

Enter Syscor’s wireless watchdog. In 2008, after emerging successfully from a field of over 80 competitors in an evaluation led by British Petroleum, Syscor unveiled its FR-Tracker technology to the crude storage industry.

Over the past decade, Syscor has successfully deployed its systems at tank farms owned by Enbridge, INEOS, Gibson, BP and Irving Oil—and now, the company is preparing to step up its game with the imminent launch of a second-generation facility monitoring system, pending certification.

“There are very well-developed statistics that tell us one in 149 tanks will have a $2-million-plus incident a year,” says Tzonev. “We’ve had about 30 tank installations so far; we’ve definitely prevented one sinking of a floating roof, and possibly prevented two others.”

Enbridge actively looks for opportunities to adapt and harness technology to enhance our pipeline and facility safety programs. We invested in Syscor’s technology in 2011, we conducted a two-year pilot program in northern Alberta to help develop FR-Tracker 2.0, and we now have the technology installed on five tanks in the Fort McMurray area—with wider deployment coming soon.

“Through regular inspections and expert judgment, our tank terminal staff keep our system operating reliably and safely. Enhancing that program with an ‘always-on’ monitoring system helps us to spot small changes and patterns of change in a roof’s movement—developments that can provide early indication of a maintenance need, and create even greater operational reliability,” says Dr. Chris O’Neill, a technical manager with Enbridge’s Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) group.

“Syscor’s technology can spot these early signs and tell us there’s a problem worth investigating—usually earlier than we would have otherwise known—and that allows us to act before any issue becomes more costly to address,” adds O’Neill. “It’s really about giving yourself the data you need to make timely decisions.”